Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Sustainable Whaling?

This is gonna get interesting!

You may have noticed that I don't talk much about Whale conservation.
Yes this is obviously a Shark blog, but that's not the principal reason. What keeps me kinda speechless is the fact that at least at first glance, the pro-Whale "movement" appears to be dominated by extremists, terrorists and New Age whackos who squander zillions of scarce conservation dollars in vociferous activism and achieve little to nothing for the animals they profess to love. In fact, the situation appears so completely irrational and positions, so hopelessly entrenched that I've kind of given up on trying to talk about it even with otherwise highly intelligent people whose opinions I normally value and respect.

This is particularly frustrating since at least on a theoretical level, everybody (with a brain) knows the final solution anyway: sustainable wildlife extraction.
It's not at all different from Sharks, Tuna, Swordfish and all other over-exploited marine resources: stocks must be allowed to recover but once they have, one will have to accept that some of the animals be killed. Only by sitting at the negotiating table and accepting a compromise will we be able to influence how many animals of which species will be killed where, when, and in which way.
And yes, I'm repeating myself!

Now, it appears, the IWC has come up with a proposal for sustainable whaling.

Methinks, it's about bloody time!
Can some Whales like Minkes be harvested sustainably? Some Dolphins?
Are there ethical ways of doing so?

And if so, will the activists engage in goal-oriented negotiations, as in defining all relevant parameters and working towards efficient monitoring - or will they continue to shout Anathema! like Sea Shepherd, continue to squander our money and achieve nothing good in the process?

Anybody taking bets?

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